It’s incorrect to refer to Putin as “Vlad.” Vladimir is never Vlad. Vlad is short for Vladislav. And for Vladimir it’s Volodia if he’s a very good boy, Vova if he’s a regular guy, and Vovan if he’s running around with petty criminals. Another possibility is Vovchik, which makes him sound clownish.
11 responses to “Minor Pet Peeve”
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I assume that the association of Vladimir to Vlad has nothing to do with Russian at all but rather comes from the Romanian Vlad Țepeș (aka the Impaler). As far as I can tell Vlad is name by itself in Romanian and some quick googling gives the impression that it’s still used.
That is hearing both Vladimir and Vlad most Americans know or care nothing of the origins and assume the latter is derived from the first.
On Volodia, Vova etc. I love Slavic diminutives (one of the coolest parts of the languages) and often miss them in English (one of the poorest languages in terms of diminutives imagineable).
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“I assume that the association of Vladimir to Vlad has nothing to do with Russian at all but rather comes from the Romanian Vlad Țepeș (aka the Impaler).”
- That’s what I thought, too. But the character isn’t that meaningful to Russians. This is off-culture and off-country.
“I love Slavic diminutives (one of the coolest parts of the languages) and often miss them in English (one of the poorest languages in terms of diminutives imagineable).”
- I’ve seen books translated from Russian that include a glossary of all the diminutive forms of the characters’ names because it gets very confusing when Alexei is referred to as Lyosha and Elizaveta as Lilia. 🙂
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“a glossary of all the diminutive forms of the characters’ names”
It’s not just names, in Polish they stick diminutives on any noun that moves (and sometimes adjectives or adverbs as well). Different forms have different connotations….
pies – dog
piesek – doggie
pieseczek – little doggie
psina – poor little doggie
psiunia – widdu doggie
piechu – darned dog!and on and on
It’s all great fun.
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“in Russian psina is more like big nasty dog”
False friends and/or cognates with very different connotations are also lots of fun in the Slavic languages, much more so than between Romance or Germanic languages. Russian ‘remember’ sounds just like Polish ‘forget’, Czech ‘girl’ sounds like Polish ‘hooker’ etc. etc.
Different meanings of the ‘same’ word in Latin America can also be fun.
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Yes, Slavic names are awesome. I am trying to pick up some Russian words in light of our new overlords, so I refer to Donald Trump as Donaldik Fyodorovich.
I assume that the Romanian name Vlad comes from the same root as Vladislav and Vladimir (and also Walter, and Germanic names ending in -wald): The proto-Indo-European root *wal (val) meaning “strong.”
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The most confusing ones are Vladislav, Sviatoslav and Viacheslav because they can all be called Slava or Slavik.
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But in Spanish, it’s very often Vladi or Bladi. So I like calling Putin that, in the wrong language and all. It is parallel to my policy of never saying Trump — just Trumpy and Trumpalump. An intentional failure to respect.
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And then there is “Vovochka”, as in infamous jokes/anecdotes.
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Also Vovik and Vovchik. 😄
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Włodek is the diminutive that I am familiar with of Włodzimierz in Polish. I expect that this is the same name as Vladimir(?) I know several Polish mathematicians who go by this nickname. Are there any other diminutives of this name in Polish? I am not aware of any.
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